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Update: Following a marathon mark-up, shortly before midnight on Wednesday the House Agriculture Committee passed its version of the farm bill on a 35-11 vote.

The House Agriculture Committee tackled the Commodity Title and nutrition programs in the early session of Wednesday’s farm bill mark-up. Among amendments to the legislation considered by the committee were those addressing dairy and sugar programs, FSA office closings and food stamp funding cuts.

The House bill -- formally titled the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management (FARMM) Act -- would reduce spending by $35 billion over 10 years.

“In general, the bill provides deficit reduction and reform,” said Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. “It is a tough farm bill, but a fair one. We face huge deficits and the heavy burden of debt. We needed to go deeper in finding savings and we needed to do it in a more balanced way. At the end of the day, the FARRM Act will contribute more than $35 billion to deficit reduction with $14 billion coming from the farm safety net, $6 billion coming from conservation programs, and $16 billion from nutrition reforms.”

Lucas also spoke on the bill’s elimination of direct payments. “In the past, I have defended direct payments because they are an effective and trade-compliant way to help producers manage price, production, and cost risk. The direct payment has been a lifeline for a lot of farmers.

“But there simply are no sacred cows. If it cost money, it was on the table for cuts. Ultimately, we decided to repeal direct payments because the size of the cuts we are making made it impossible to keep them. In fact, beyond the marketing loan program, we repealed all current farm programs now in place, which saves taxpayers over $14 billion.”

While unhappy with proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, ranking member, fretted about the tight timeframe for passing a new farm bill. The current farm bill expires in late September.

Alluding to the reluctance of Republican House leadership to schedule floor time for the farm bill, Peterson warned that if they fail “to bring up this farm bill before the (August) recess, they will jeopardize one of the economic bright spots of our nation’s fragile economy.

“Farmers need the certainty of a five year farm bill. We cannot wait for the mess that will occur during the lame duck and get drug into that whole mess. Frankly, I think an extension of current farm policy potentially creates more problems than it solves. I am hopeful the House leadership gets this right and brings the bill to the floor shortly after we move it out of this committee, so we can ultimately finish the bill in September.

“Let’s hope we don’t get drug into this partisanship that pervades the rest of this place.”

Goodlatte said the amendment “is consistent with 80 percent of the underlying legislation but does not include the controversial supply management piece. Our amendment offers a compromise that incorporates the two-tier premium structure in both (FARMM) and the Senate-passed (farm) bill while eliminating the stabilization program, which is a complex government intervention.”

Lucas, who opposed the amendment (as did Peterson), said “While the last several years have been good for many, if not most commodity groups, let’s be honest: dairy has had one of the worst, most volatile periods in their history.”

Goodlatte said FARRM “dramatically reforms nearly every Title I program. However, one commodity stands out for a total lack of reform: sugar. In fact, unlike any Title I program, the sugar program was not even debated during the committee’s hearings on the reauthorization of the farm bill. … The sugar program needs to be reformed for many reasons. Studies have shown the sugar program increases food costs. Economists at Iowa State University have estimated that food price increases resulting from the current sugar program have cost consumers up to $3.5 billion a year. … Further, the sugar program constitutes an almost unbelievable government intrusion into private business decisions. Under the market allotment system, the federal government tells every sugar company the exact amount of sugar it can legally sell down to the pound. … It is a pure command and control regime.”

Peterson “strongly” opposed the amendment as it would make the sugar program “completely unworkable. … Every other country in the world has support for a sugar program, including Mexico, Brazil, including all (those) that produce sugar. It isn’t realistic to unilaterally disarm when everybody else is doing this.”